In recent years, the number of television broadcasts (most notably news, weather, financial, and sports broadcasts) that are instituting a visual feature known as a “news crawl” to their programming has been steadily increasing. The “news crawl” is typically implemented as a scrolling textual information display located in a small dedicated band across the bottom 5% to 8% of the screen during broadcasts. This dedicated band typically extends across the entire width of the screen and is just sufficient in height to fit a single line of right-to-left scrolling text.
The news crawl usually carries a continuously updated series of short informational messages related to current news, weather, financial news and/or sports. Although typically presented as a bottom-justified scrolling band as described above, a news crawl can be placed along a left, right or top edge of the display screen.
While some television viewers find news crawls useful and informative, many find them distracting and/or annoying and would prefer to view television broadcasts without them. Despite the preference of some viewers for an “unadorned” television broadcast, the news crawl seems to have become an expected, if sometimes unwelcome standard feature of mainstream television news programming.
In addition, some networks (e.g., TNN) display a fixed advertising bar along an edge of the screen (usually the bottom edge), even during movies and other programming. Due to the fixed display location of advertising bars and news crawls, they can produce an effect known as “phosphor burn.” Phosphor burn is “burnout” or damage to luminous phosphors (on phosphor-based displays such as CRTs) that occurs when a fixed or substantially fixed pattern is displayed for long periods of time. This effect is well known in computer displays, where “screen savers” that prevent long-term display of fixed information have become a popular remedy. The effects of phosphor burn can often be seen on airport and pub television screens where the television is tuned to one channel (e.g., a news or sports channel that displays a crawl or fixed advertising bar) with a static or nearly static video display for long periods of time. Phosphor burn reduces the brightness and contrast of only the affected area of the screen, resulting in a ghost like permanent image being “burned onto” the display. The burned image cannot be repaired and creates a highly distractive area on the display screen for the viewer. Areas of the screen that are not subjected to the fixed pattern crawl or advertising bar are relatively unaffected.
In light of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a means by which a viewer could eliminate fixed advertising bars and/or news crawls from a television display screen.